From Solo to Surrounded and Back Again

It´s funny how things can change in the blink of an eye.

The first couple of days, I´d been adjusting to being alone. I´d also been adjusting to hearing languages other than English (and being frustrated at not being able to communicate as easily) ...
And then, pow! All of a sudden it became sort of easy, because I was suddenly coming into contact with people who would speak English. Well, some, not all.

And I finally got to hang out with some fellow tourist/travellers. And it seemed to all be a matter of timing.

Yesterday, I made it over to Plaça de Catalunya in time for the Picasso walk (only three or four minutes more than the Gothic Quarter walk the day before) and got to talking to this older Kiwi couple while we waited for our tour guide (who were super nice).

At the end of the two-hour walk, we made into the Picasso museum, which had loads of art from his different artistic periods (and yes, there was some Cubism). I was supposed to meet up with my new Canadian friend Priscilla later in the day, and was trying to figure out what time to leave the museum to go back to the Raval to e-mail her when ... there she was, in the exact same room, with two girls she met at her hostel. The timing couldn´t have been better!

After the museum, we went down near the water for a bit of shopping, etc. We did a LOT of walking! I was so tired after that!

But it didn´t stop there ... we parted ways for a bit to rest, and then I took the metro back down to her hostel later on, and we went to dinner. The paella was decent (if a bit small) ... and the mussels were good, too. But the sangria was friggin´HUGE! It was, like, a litre for each of us! But it tasted so good.

We finished it off with some gelato down the street, and back to her hostel to find out what some of her fellow guests were doing.

It was nuts. They started off with a drinking game (and it reminded me how much older I was than some of those) ... then we went out. I thought we´d go down the Ramblas. We ended up walking the long way, along the boardwalk, down to the beach (and I got a piggyback from one of the Aussies in the group - good man, if too brave for his own good) .

The club was typical (although the front door staff gave us grief for not having flyers - those apparently work)... but it was loads of good harmless fun. I ended up having to crash at Priscilla´s hostel, rather than trying to get back to my part of town in the middle of the night, or trying to do the crawl of shame.

The next day, Priscilla and I managed to get ourselves up and we went shopping in my part of town. We also met up with another girl from her hostel, and we just went from place to place. We ended our afternoon with some tapas, as both of them were leaving Barcelona.

So both of them were gone, which is kinda sad. But it was good being around people I could relate to, at least for a little while.

Tomorrow´s my last day. I´ll have to use the time wisely, because Friday I´m going to have to re-orient myself all over again.